English cricket's deal with the Stanford dollar may have cost its teams - Middlesex and Kent - their places in the Twenty20 Champions League tournament. Talks about the proposed competition will be held in Mumbai today between the Indian Premier League's commissioner, Lalit Modi, and the chief executives of Cricket South Africa and Cricket Australia, Gerald Majola and James Sutherland, and the England and Wales Cricket Board's hopes that it could count on the support of its South African and Australian counterparts in rejecting the terms on offer from India's BCCI have receded because its dealings with Sir Allen Stanford still rankle in the southern hemisphere.

Stanford initially approached Australia with his tournament plans but was referred to the International Cricket Council with the message that any such event should involve several nations. England had fewer qualms. Now Australia and South Africa look likely to agree to the BCCI taking $10m (£5.05m) in revenue, holding 50% of the tournament shares and having first call on players for the IPL ahead of Test sides. The other competitors - teams from Pakistan or New Zealand are expected to replace the English - must divide $10m and the other shares between them.

England's best hope lies with the ICC, which has asserted itself with a letter reminding stakeholders that the T20 league must release its players for the Champions Trophy, which finishes a day before the T20 league's scheduled start.

No transfer of power

Three months after the shock departure from Arsenal of the managing director, Keith Edelman, there is yet more surprise about how long it is taking them to find a new chief executive.

Peter Hill-Wood, the chairman, below, had been prepared to break off his holiday in the US in the event of an appointment being made. But three weeks into a four-week break he has not been called back. There is a shortlist which is believed to feature four candidates but there is no explanation as to what is causing the hold-up. In the meantime Ken Friar, along-serving director, has been dealing with player contracts. But one of the key roles required of the new person will be to oversee transfer activity and, at a time when signings have been sparse, fans may begin to wonder if the two things are linked.

Blowing in the wind

Two weeks before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, Britain's elite-sport funding authority, UK Sport, held a talent-identification day for more than 150 women with a view to turning them into champions for 2012. Aged 17-25 and all county-level athletes, they underwent tests aimed at discovering whether they have the raw potential to become modern pentathletes, rowers, cyclists or canoeists under the Girls for Gold scheme.

However, another set of tests was aimed at seeing if anyone would make an Olympic windsurfer, which seems a pointless exercise given that that sport's best practitioners have, from the earliest age, had experience of the highly technical vagaries of winds and currents.

Do it by the book

Bookmakers could soon be obliged to provide sports governing bodies with all the most intimate details of their clients' trading if they suspect match-fixing or cheating. Under new licensing conditions proposed by the industry regulator, the Gambling Commission, there will be a requirement for operators to "provide the relevant sport governing body with sufficient information to conduct an effective investigation if the licensee suspects that the information may relate to a breach of a rule on betting applied by that governing body".

The wording of the licensing condition that is expected to be adopted broadens what is required of bookmakers. In the past, sports bodies' inquiries into apparent breaches of rules have been hampered by bookmakers' reluctance to divulge what they consider to be the private data of their clients. But the commission's new stance is likely to prevent UK-based bookies from hiding behind a spurious reading of data-protection rules. Some operators already force clients to sign disclaimers, which will help sport to clean up corruption.